


One Red Thread Through the Middle of a Song

by JackEPeace



Category: Descendants (Disney Movies)
Genre: F/F, Soul Mate AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-15
Updated: 2018-06-15
Packaged: 2019-05-23 12:39:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,158
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14934423
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JackEPeace/pseuds/JackEPeace
Summary: Maleficent snips the scissors closed and Mal watches as the thread falls limp, no longer pulled taunt by whatever is on the other side. The red flickers for a moment before disappearing completely. A shiver runs up the length of her spine and an ache spreads across her ribs like a raven unfurling its wings. Mal looks at her finger and feels a tightness in her throat she’s never felt before.Maleficent settles a hand on her daughter’s head. “You’ll thank me for this.”Mal has heard that particular phrase before. It has yet to prove true.(a soul mate AU)





	One Red Thread Through the Middle of a Song

**Author's Note:**

> Hello I love soul mate stories.
> 
> Also I played around with Descendants canon a little bit because why not? 
> 
> Title from "One Red Thread" by Blind Pilot

Mal is five years old the first time she notices the red string tied to her finger. She’s not sure if it’s suddenly just appeared or if she’s never thought to notice it before, if she’s been too busy running around the Bargain Castle or trying to imitate her mother’s mischief to bother noticing it.

She pauses in her sketching, ignoring the nub of charcoal in her hand and the half-finished sketch of a dragon that she’s been doing on one of the castle’s stones. Instead, she focuses on the thread -how brightly colored it is, how it seems to stretch up and out the window and into the distance.

Tentatively, Mal reaches forward, brushing her finger against the thread. It feels somehow tangible but not there at all. Real but also just a part of her imagination.

Mal tugs on it and, almost imperceptibly, feels something pull back. Something…someone…on the other end?

Slowly, Mal gets to her feet, curious as to what might be on the other side of the string. Where does it lead? To what small, dingy part of the Isle does this red thread want her to go? She’s starting to explore more and more places on the Isle, though everything is seemingly the same: grey and dull and full of someone else’s trash. But maybe this is somewhere new. Maybe this is the part of the Isle she’s always meant to explore and-

Mal runs into her mother without even realizing that Maleficent is there at all.

Normally she’s better about that sort of thing. Normally she knows to listen for her footsteps, to look out for her shadow, to gauge the mood in the room before Maleficent even shows up.

But Mal runs right into her legs, jumping in surprise first when she connects with Maleficent’s body and then again when her mother reaches down, grabbing onto her shoulders. “Pay attention, Mal,” Maleficent says, with only the slightest sound of interest in her tone.

Mal looks up at her mother and before she can nod and untangle herself from the woman’s grasp, Maleficent’s attention falls on the stretching red thread.

Mal is almost disappointed to see that her mother can see it too.

“What’s this?” Maleficent asks, sneering. She reaches to touch it and Mal feels a thrum of energy, a spark like lightning, unpleasant as it sizzles through her skin.

“It just showed up,” Mal tells her, pulling her hand back just enough that Maleficent stops touching the string. “I didn’t do anything.”

But Maleficent is frowning, her eyebrows knotted together in a V. She looks at the thread, how it’s knotted onto Mal’s finger, and then turns her head, following the progress. Maleficent follows the thread toward the window, peering out through the grey mist and into the distance. Mal tries to do the same without making it obvious, tries to see whatever it is that her mother is looking at. There’s another castle out there in the distance, nearly the same color as the fog, something Mal hasn’t really noticed before or given much thought to. There are vultures circling the turrets, a flash of blue in one of the windows, stones covered in vines and moss.

Looking at the castle, Mal feels another tug on the thread attached to her finger. A pull. She can feel it in her chest too, something that makes her want to cross the Isle and see what’s waiting for her there in the castle.

Maleficent only looks disgusted, yanking Mal backward from the window; in her surprise, Mal falls to the floor, a tangle of limbs, still feeling foggy from her sudden longing to explore the castle. Maleficent leaves her there on the floor, disappearing into one of the other rooms in the Bargain Castle, only to return moments later with a rusty pair of scissors.

The red thread fits delicately between the blades of the scissors and Mal can feel that electricity again, the unpleasant vibrations that come from her mother’s fingers on the thread. “You don’t need this,” Maleficent says decisively, breezily. “I’m the only person you need in your life, my darling girl.”

Mal is pretty sure that the words ‘darling girl’ coming out of anyone else’s mouth might sound sweet, affectionate, soft. But here on the Isle, those things don’t exist.

Instead, she watches the thread caught there between the blades. “Wait. I just want to know what it means.”

Maleficent only shakes her head. “Nothing. Trust me. None of this means anything at all for someone like you.”

With that, she snips the scissors closed and Mal watches as the thread falls limp, no longer pulled taunt by whatever is on the other side. The red flickers for a moment before disappearing completely. A shiver runs up the length of her spine and an ache spreads across her ribs like a raven unfurling its wings. Mal looks at her finger and feels a tightness in her throat she’s never felt before.

Maleficent settles a hand on her daughter’s head. “You’ll thank me for this.”

Mal has heard that particular phrase before. It has yet to prove true.

 

* * *

 

Mal is six years old when a vulture flies into the kitchen through the glass-less window and spreads its battered wings wide. There is an envelope clutched between its beak and its claws are a deep yellow, curling around the stone of the castle wall. Mal can’t help but look at the shock of color, wishing that she had something that she could use to recreate it. All she can do is color in blacks and greys. All the other colors, it seems, stay in Auradon.

Maleficent whirls around to face the bird, scowling. “Shoo, you foul, disgusting creature,” she sneers. “Get out of here.”

The vulture opens its beak, letting the envelope flutter to the ground, before disappearing from the window once more with a flap of its large wings. Mal looks with interest at the envelope, the paper thick, the lettering across the front ornate. She just barely makes out the letters of her name before Maleficent snatches up the envelope, tearing it open.

“What is it?” Mal asks, secretly pleased by the way her mother’s face seems to pale when she reads the contents of the envelope. She’s a fan of anything that can make her mother look that way.

Maleficent looks at her through narrowed eyes. “Nothing,” she says shortly. “Nothing at all. Nothing you need.”

Mal watches with disinterest as Maleficent rips the paper into small squares, tossing them out the window in the direction of the disappearing vulture.

She’s used to things like this. She’s used to Maleficent deciding what she needs and what she doesn’t.

Days later, Mal finds her attention drawn to the window once more, where she can hear sounds that she’s never heard on the Isle before, drifting in the direction of the Bargain Castle on the putrid wind.

Laughter. Fun.

Mal stands at the window, staring out at the castle across the way. She hasn’t thought about that castle since the day her mother snipped the red thread in two. And, honestly, she hasn’t thought about the red thread since that day either. Her mother knows what’s best, after all, and who is Mal to question her decisions? Not that any good comes of it if she does.

But now, Mal leans as far out the window as she can, staring at the castle. She can hear the laughing, can see the gathering of villains and their children, can smell the tantalizing odors of food that has only just begun to rot. And she can see a flash of blue there in the middle of it all.

“What’s going on?” Mal asks when her mother comes up behind her to see what has occupied her daughter’s attention.

Maleficent smiles, resting a hand on Mal’s shoulder. “They’re having a party. A birthday party, for Grimhilde’s daughter.”  

Mal’s eyes narrow slightly. A party. She’s never heard of such a thing, but she has to admit it looks like it might be…fun.

“I guess they didn’t invite you,” Maleficent says dismissively, patting Mal on the head. “What a shame.”

Something flares inside her chest, a hot burst that has only previously been directed toward her mother. Mal bites the inside of her cheek, turning away from the sight of the games and the blue and the fun. “I hate her.”

Mal barely notices the way that her finger itches, barely registers the tug she feels, barely offers a passing thought to the long-gone red thread.

Maleficent smiles, looking pleased with her daughter for the first time. “Good.”

 

* * *

 

Mal is eight years old when she first runs into the small, wiry thief trying to slip into the Bargain Castle. She catches him trying to creep through the upper rooms in the castle, an impressive feat considering the fact that it means he’s gone through the lower levels already without being noticed by a single goblin or Maleficent herself.

Mal narrows her eyes at him, her gaze pinning the boy in place as efficiently as Maleficent’s clawed hands could have done. “What are you doing here?”

The boy looks almost afraid but, more than that, he looks almost entertained, eager to see what might happen next. “My father said no one could get inside.”

“Who would want to?” Mal crosses her arms over her chest.

“I wanted to prove him wrong,” the boy says. “I was going to take something to prove I had been here.”

Mal shrugs, waving a hand toward the dark and empty rooms, full of dusty and broken items and thick cobwebs. “Be my guest.”

The boy looks almost disappointed. “It’s no fun if you have permission to take it,” he tells her. “At least make me work for it.”

So when the boy, Jay, snatches on of Maleficent’s old, useless spell books, Mal chases him out of the castle and onto the streets of the Isle, following him effortlessly as he weaves and ducks among the Isle residents and puddles of muck in the streets.

And, Mal quickly decides, chasing Jay around the Isle and following him into stalls and houses to snatch a few things here and there is far more fun than lurking around the Bargain Castle and waiting to see what mood Maleficent will be in from minute to minute.

People on the Isle become used to the sight of the two wild imps running around, stealing whatever they can fit into their hands, leaving annoyance and sometimes a little bloodshed in their wake.

Jay is the only person Mal finds who is brave enough to sneak with her into Uma’s territory down by the wharfs and remind Uma who’s the real boss of the Isle. Jay is the only person who will sneak around the Isle with her in the dark or in the grey, early morning hours, who will pick through the garbage washed up on the shore from Auradon or sneak onto the goblin barges to get the best things for themselves.

Though Jay, like everyone else Mal knows, has no problem looking at Auradon through narrowed eyes and with a sneer on his face. Through the dome that surrounds the Isle, even Auradon looks slightly duller, smudged with grey across the brilliantly sparkling, smooth water.

“Would you ever go there?” Mal asks, picking her way across the slick rocks that surround what barely passes as a beach. She’s careful to stay as far from the water as possible, not trusting the ocean even though the tide is out. “To Auradon.”

Jay laughs. “Yeah right,” he says. “Why would I want to go there? I bet it’s boring. Nothing to steal.”

“Or,” Mal says, “there’s probably a _lot_ to steal. Like gold.”

Jay grins. “Pillows.”

“Food.”

“Clothes that fit.”

“Or maybe even art su-” Mal slips on the slick rocks before she can finish the thought, losing her footing and tumbling toward the black waves.

She grabs at the rocks and sand to stop herself from rolling completely down the bank and into the water, not caring at how the sand and rocks bite into her fingers. Mal brings herself to a stop before she gets close to the water, trying to ignore the pounding in her heart.

Jay laughs as he kneels down beside her, offering a hand. “Are you okay?”

Mal glowers, smacking his hand aside. She looks at the blood trickling down her palm and between her fingers and can’t help but think about the day she had looked at her hand and seen a different sort of red thread there.

“You should wash that off,” Jay says, stepping back at Mal gets to her feet.

Mal just wipes her hands across her tattered pants, leaving streaks of dirt and blood behind. Her fingers throb and there’s a strange pulsing that matches it just below her ribs, the same sensation that always follows whenever she thinks about that string around her finger.

“Hey, so,” Mal says, following Jay back up the bank, “did you ever have like…actually never mind, forget it.”

Jay looks at her with interest. “Have what?”

“It’s dumb,” Mal says flatly.

“Probably,” Jay says but there’s a smile on his face and Mal honestly can’t remember the last time someone actually smiled at her while encouraging her to do something. “What were you going to say?”

Mal looks at her fingers again, the line of blood still collecting in the scratch from the rocks, and frowns. “Did you ever have…like a…” She looks at Jay and forces herself to ask the question. “A red thread coming out from one of your fingers? Like it was tied to it?”

The words tumble out in a rush and as Mal says them, she realizes that she’s been waiting a long time to ask this particular question. To say _am I the only one who saw that?_ To ask _why did I have this and where was it going?_ Of course asking Maleficent would be out of the question. And she has no one else on the Isle to talk to aside from Jay.

Jay’s expression falters slightly, his smile disappearing. “Yeah, I…when I was a kid,” he says, glancing away from Mal and out toward the stormy grey water. “My dad got rid of it though, so I never really knew what the point of it was.”

Mal lets out the breath she’s been holding in a rush. “My mother did the same thing.”

Jay nods. “He said all Isle parents did. That it was just Auradon stuff.”

“That _what_ was?” Mal clenches her jaw, feeling a wave of annoyance. “What was it for?”

“It was supposed to connect us to our soul mate or whatever,” Jay says and he shrugs at the end of it, as though to lessen the importance of his words.

Or the perceived importance. Because Mal has no idea what he’s talking about. “Our what?”

“You know? A soul mate? True love? Happily ever after?” Jay looks toward Auradon once more. “All those stories they tell us about Auradon, how everyone saved the day and lived happily ever after…all that kind of stuff? Soul mates. I guess the red thread is supposed to help you find them. That’s how all those dumb princes and princesses knew when they had found their perfect person.”

Mal wrinkles her nose at Jay’s words, looking at her hand once more. For once, she’s glad that there’s no thread there anymore. She’s glad that her mother snipped it away. “That is Auradon stuff,” she says. “I don’t need a soul mate.”

“Good,” Jay says, his trademark smirk returning. “Because who would want to fall in love with you.” He flicks her shoulder playfully.

Mal gives him a shove, pushing him to the ground. Jay laughs but she can still see him attempting to hide a wince, rubbing at his elbow. There’s a hint of fear in his eyes, a shimmer of respect. Which, she thinks, is definitely more important any true love and happily ever afters. And more useful too.

 

* * *

 

Mal is eleven when she’s hiding out from her mother and happens upon someone else doing the same thing. Mal isn’t in the habit of hanging around the Bargain Castle unless she absolutely has to, though she’s having a harder and harder time recently trying to remember why she _has_ to do anything involving the derelict old castle and the derelict woman who lives there. In her hands, she’s got half of a loaf of bread, sent this morning from Auradon; Uma has the other half, something that still sends a fire licking through Mal’s stomach, one she can’t blame entirely on hunger. She never should have let her guard down enough to give Uma the chance to try and snatch the bread from her yet that was exactly what happened but Mal figures some food is better than none and her first reaction upon realizing that she’s not entirely alone in the alley she’s ducked into is to clutch the bread tighter in her hands.

It takes Mal only a second to realize that the figure she can see in the darkness isn’t a threat. She knows enough about the citizens of the Isle to be able to pick out the weak from the strong pretty quickly. And this girl, this little thing, is definitely not strong. Not based on the way that she’s still tucked against the crumbling wall of the bait shop, her arms wrapped around herself, hugging tightly.

And it takes Mal only a second longer to notice the flash of blue, the only bit of color in the entire alleyway.

Even though Mal knows that she isn’t going to have another fight on her hands, she still takes a step backward, clutching the bread close to her chest. “What are you doing here.” The words come out more like an accusation than a question.

Mal knows that it’s stupid to still think about that day, how it had felt to look out the window and see the party of the princess of the Isle and know that she hadn’t been invited along with everyone else. Mal didn’t care about things like that: parities and princesses and laughter. But still, she likes to think of herself as the ruler of the Isle and this girl, this princess in a castle just as rundown and decrepit as the one Mal calls home, has always been a reminder that there might be someone else out there.

Though, looking at her now, Mal thinks this girl doesn’t look like much of a ruler. She doesn’t look like much of anything with her pale skin and her red lips and the tear in the knee of her pants.

The girl looks at Mal, blinking at her through the dullness of the alleyway, and Mal feels that strange tug beneath her ribs, a stirring in the place that always reminds her that there’s something missing. Not that she ever really knows what it is.

Strangely, Mal can’t help but feel like something is supposed to be happening right now.

“I’m running away from home,” the girl tells her quietly and Mal doesn’t think she’s going to be very successful in this venture. Not when she can’t open her mouth and do anything but whisper.

Out here on the Isle, you need to roar.

Mal can see the girl looking at the bread in her hands and Mal shoves it into her mouth quickly, not taking the time to savor or enjoy something that doesn’t have mold on it. It seems more important to swallow it before anyone else can.

But then, instead of turning her back on the blue haired girl in the shadows, Mal just steps closer. “Why are you doing that?”

“Because I hate my mother.” There’s a sureness in the girl’s voice that Mal almost envies, a certainty that makes her wish that she was brave enough to be able to say those words out loud.

Instead of saying any of these things, instead of trying the words out herself, Mal just shrugs. “So?”

The little princess only shakes her head. “You wouldn’t understand.”

Mal lifts her eyebrows. “Try me.”

But the other girl doesn’t say anything at all. She just looks at Mal and Mal can’t help but look back at her and wonder if maybe there isn’t a bit of steel in her backbone. If she’s not suited for the Isle after all.     

“You can’t stay out here,” Mal says flatly. “Not when it gets dark. Not where people can find you.”

She knows that much about the girl at least. Whether she’s from the Isle or not won’t really matter much when the sun goes down, when the goblins and the pirates leave the wharf, when more than just a purple haired daughter of a fairy prowls these alleys.

All Mal gets in response is a shrug. “I don’t have anywhere else to stay.”

Mal bites her tongue to keep herself from speaking but, in the end, it doesn’t really matter. “I know a place.”

It’s a place she and Jay have found recently, an empty and abandoned old warehouse that is like so many of the other things on the Isle: unused, unwanted, unkempt. But she has grand ideas for the place, things she’s only started putting into motion. She and Jay are going to make it more of a home than the Bargain Castle or the junk shop ever were, a place that’s going to belong to just the two of them. Somewhere that she can go when she’s running away from home, too.

So Mal figures that it might be alright to show the place to a fellow runaway, even if it happens to be _this_ particular lost girl. Even if there’s that weird pulling in her stomach to contend with.

Mal throws a rock at a sign overhead, hitting it perfectly, getting the stairs to lower for her. “This is my place,” she tells the girl as she leads the way into the room. “I’m fixing it up.”

The girl looks around, taking in the half-broken windows, the dust on the floor, the couches and chairs with missing legs and stuffing spilling out. There’s outlines on the wall where Mal has started her art pieces, where her unfinished ideas are still waiting to take shape. Mal looks at it and sees a paradise, a refuge, somewhere she can hide from her mother with her fingernails like claws. But there’s a flutter of anxiety that spreads through her when she thinks about what this girl might see when she takes it all in.

But the only reaction she gets is a smile. Something Mal still isn’t entirely used to. “I like it.”

Mal shrugs, crossing her arms over her chest. “I don’t care if you do or not,” she says. “It doesn’t matter to me if you stay here.”

“Thank you for showing me this place,” the girl says. “My name is Evie.”

She holds out her hand to shake but Mal refuses, keeping her arms crossed. “So?”

Evie doesn’t seem bothered or put-off by Mal’s reaction. Mal figures that’s par for the course with parents like theirs. Being rebuffed isn’t exactly out of the ordinary.

But still, when Mal is leaving a little while later, she finds herself stopping and turning back to face Evie, who is attempting to shove some of the stuffing back into a couch cushion. “I’m Mal.”

 

* * *

 

Mal is twelve when she decides that Evie isn’t going anywhere. That Evie, like Jay, might actually stick around and be an outlier in the Isle’s system of being around someone only long enough to use them.

At first, Mal had tried to push the girl away, had tried to toss her out of the warehouse hideout -though Evie always managed to find her in other places too. She’d tried to chase her off, something else that hadn’t seemed to bother Evie in the slightest. Despite Mal’s best efforts, Evie never disappeared far enough that Mal couldn’t see her lurking out the corner of her eye, a flash of blue amidst the grey of the Isle.

And so, eventually, Mal had started looking for her hiding there in the shadows.

And Evie had stopped hiding in them, taking a place by Mal’s side like she’d been waiting to do that for years.

Mal is thirteen when their group of three becomes four, when they stumble upon Carlos trying to accomplish one of the many tasks on his mother’s never-ending to-do-list while being tormented by Mad Maddy and her pathetic group of followers. Mal hadn’t been interested in altering her plans of causing mayhem and destruction elsewhere on the Isle but Evie had stepped forward without hesitation and the decision to intervene had unfortunately been made for her.

It had been strange, not that Mal would ever admit it out loud. Watching Evie, seeing her move forward, had made her feel almost compelled to do the same, like there was a rope tied to Evie’s waist with Mal on the other end.

Either way, they had stepped in and Mal had grudgingly let Carlos into the group, ignoring the laughter and teasing from Uma and other Isle kids. “I thought you were supposed to be the baddest girl on the Isle, Mal,” Uma had laughed with tears in her eyes. “And _that’s_ your crew?”

“Don’t listen to her, Mal,” Evie had said later that night, when it was just the two of them in the hideout and the sound of her voice in the growing darkness had made Mal feel that familiar tug in the bottom of her stomach. “She doesn’t know what she’s talking about.”

Mal had only scoffed, rolling her eyes at Evie. “I never listen to Uma. Or anyone else.”

Except Evie, which is starting to become an unsettling habit.

 

* * *

 

Mal is fourteen the first time Evie brings up the word “Auradon” and it doesn’t sound like a curse when she says it.

They can see the top of Beast’s castle through the grimy windows the hideout and the sight always makes Mal scowl, turning her head away in disgust. But Evie doesn’t have quite the same reaction, letting her eyes linger when the sun hits the spires just right, making them sparkle even though the dome.

“I think I would like to go to Auradon one day,” Evie says wistfully and she makes the word sound like a fairytale, if you believed in that sort of thing.

Whenever her mother talks about Auradon, it’s always like she’s spitting the word to the ground, like she can’t imagine anything worse than that place. The only time Maleficent ever talks about Auradon is when she’s telling Mal about how she’s going to raze the place to the ground.

But Evie…Evie looks like she can’t think of a better place to be.

Mal scowls at her, feeling something churning the pit of her stomach.

She tells herself it’s annoyance at Evie’s foolishness, her idea that people like them could actually go somewhere like Auradon and be welcome.

But Mal thinks it might be something else.

“Why would you want to go there?” Mal questions instead, turning away from the sight of Beast’s castle. She looks at Jay and Carlos, who seem uninterested in this particular conversation. “Auradon is the worst.”

Evie just tilts her head, continuing to study the castle through the windows. “Think of all the pretty clothes they have there,” she sighs. “And all the pretty colors. And the perfect princes.”

That thought really makes Mal’s stomach roll.

“I’m never going to Auradon,” Mal mumbles, putting her back to Evie and the castle. “Ever.”

“I thought your mom wanted to take it over,” Carlos remarks without looking up from whatever gadget he’s tinkering with. “Wouldn’t you have to go there then?”

“Yeah, Mal, he has a point,” Jay says. “Plus, think of all the food.”

Mal glares at them. “You are not helping.”

Jay sticks his tongue out at her. “You don’t want a perfect prince, Mal?” He teases.

“Shut up, Jay,” Mal grumbles, tossing a moth-eaten pillow in his direction. “No one asked you.”

Jay throws the pillow back at her, laughing as Mal looks around for something heavier to throw back at his head.

Evie ignores them, her focus still on Auradon. “My mother said that everyone in Auradon has a perfect prince. A soul mate. Wouldn’t that be nice?”

Mal thinks about the red string and how it had felt the moment her mother had snipped it in half. She looks at her finger, bare as it always is. She can’t help but glance at Evie’s hands in her lap, feeling strangely vindicated to see that Evie’s hands, too, are free of red strings. Just like everyone’s on the Isle.

“That sounds terrible,” Mal says decisively. She throws her boot at Jay’s head for lack of anything else to toss in his direction before ignoring him completely, finding herself returning to Evie’s side. Even if it means looking at Auradon again. “Love is weakness.”

Evie makes a thoughtful humming sound, as though considering this possibility. She’s heard the same words from her own mother; the Evil Queen never talks about love when teaching her daughter how to snare a prince.

“Still, it could be nice to know that you wouldn’t be alone,” Evie says thoughtfully. “To know that someone out there has been picked out for you. That you don’t have to look for them…they just find you…”

And Evie looks down at her own hands and Mal feels her stomach twist up all over again, just like it did when Evie had talked about finding a boring, idiotic prince to spend the rest of her life with. But the question of the red thread and whether Evie had seen one too feels like it’s glued to the roof of her mouth, so Mal doesn’t say anything about it at all.

In fact, the subject of Auradon is dropped completely when Mal’s discarded boot connects with the back of her head and Carlos and Evie have to intervene before Jay and Mal tear the entire hideaway to pieces.

After Jay and Carlos eventually leave, slipping away to deal with whatever nonsense their parents have in store for the evening, Evie stays behind. This is something else Mal has come to expect, something that she doesn’t mind nearly as much as she might let on. Something that makes it easier to forget conversations about perfect princes and true love.

Almost.

“Would you really go to Auradon?” Mal questions quietly, almost as though she’s unwilling to interrupt the comfortable silence that has settled over the hideout.

Evie is practicing her contouring while Mal works on yet another sketch she knows that she’ll never, ever show to Evie. It’s slowly become one of her favorite ways to pass the time: in companionable silence with just Evie, listening to the sounds of her rummaging through a bag of Auradon cast-offs, trying to make herself beautiful.

The very idea makes Mal roll her eyes. She can’t imagine why Evie feels like she has to work at something like that.

Evie pauses, setting her brush aside and looking away from the cracked bit of mirror propped against the wall. “You wouldn’t? Really?”

Mal grimaces, ignoring the tightness in her chest. “Never. Those people don’t care about us. They stuck us here, give us their garbage to eat…why would I ever want to spend even a second with them?” She tightens her jaw. “I’ll never go there.”

Evie smiles faintly and Mal wishes, not for the first time, that she could understand exactly what was going through Evie’s head in that moment. She wishes she could understand Evie’s habit of doing that, of looking at Mal and letting a soft smile turn up the corners of her lips.

She’s the first one who has ever done something like that.

“I won’t go either,” Evie says with a shrug. “I would never go somewhere without you.”

Mal swallows and looks down at the sketch she’s been trying to get exactly right. “It doesn’t matter,” Mal says frankly, even though there are a dozen things that spring to her mind in that moment. “It’s not like they’re ever going to _want_ us there. You might as well keep dreaming.”

 

* * *

 

Mal is sixteen when she goes to Auradon.

She doesn’t really have a choice because she never does. The only choices she’s had are the ones made for her, by her mother, who wants to send her off to Auradon so she can take it over from the inside out, spreading throughout the kingdom like the insidious threat Maleficent has always imagined her to be.

At least, Mal reasons, she’s not going alone. At least Jay and Carlos are going with her. And Evie too.

It’s the first time anyone has actually kept a promise, not that Mal thinks much of Evie’s assurance that she would never go anywhere without Mal when she’s being bundled into the back of a limousine and carted off to the land of sparkling colors and perfect princes.

The latter doesn’t worry Mal in the slightest, of course.

What does worry Mal is how freaking happy everyone in Auradon is, how freaking bright the sun is, and how freaking difficult it is to get her hands on that stupid wand so she can give it to her mother and get the woman to leave her alone for once.

Not that any of those goes according to plan, of course.

By the end of her first two weeks in Auradon, Mal ends up with a king for a boyfriend (a blessedly short ruse, thankfully), a bunch of new dresses (in bright, Auradon colors, which would annoy her more if it didn’t make Evie ridiculously happy), a bit of a sunburn (thanks freaking bright Auradon sun), and a lizard for a mother.

Honestly, Mal thinks that lizard _might_ be an upgrade, seeing as she can keep the lizard in a tank in her room and always know what she’s doing.

There’s no stolen wand, no ruling Auradon, no villain take over, and no perfect princes.

But whatever.

Instead, there’s only sharing a room with Evie and sleeping in a bed with stupidly soft sheets and fluffy pillows. There’s classes that are actually, maybe, kinda, just a little bit interesting. There’s food that’s actually fresh and plentiful and art supplies that range beyond the usual blacks and greys that she’s used to using. And there’s people who actually seem to want to hang around her, despite the fact that she’s the daughter of the mistress of darkness, or the fact that she put their precious prince under a love spell with the intention of stealing the equally precious magic wand. Apparently having Ben’s forgiveness was really all Mal needed to get a free pass from the citizens of Auradon.

Oh, and there’s always red threads.

Dozens and dozens of them.

Everywhere she looks.

Mal is actually getting pretty sick of it and not just because seeing all the threads sparkling out of the corners of her eyes all the time is starting to give her a bit of a headache.

It’s painfully obvious to everyone they encounter that there are only four people in all of Auradon who don’t have stupid red threads and Mal spends most of her time trying to ignore that fact and that she doesn’t have a stupid string leading her to her destiny. Or whatever.

Some of the threads stretch impossible distances, stretching from Auradon and into the other kingdoms and lands miles and miles away. There are kids at Auradon Prep who have already met their soul mate, who know the person is waiting for them when they finish school and return home to whatever stupid corner of the world they’re going to rule. There are even people at Auradon Prep who have found their soul mate there, whose thread fell slack as soon as they were standing next to the person they were destined to spend the rest of their life with. And there are those who don’t know anything, who haven’t crossed paths with their happily-ever-after yet. But, of course, to hear them talk about it, that’s half the fun.

Mal is sick of listening to Jane and Lonnie giggle and make guesses about the boy on the other end of their sparkling red threads. She’s tired of listening to the gossip and speculation about Audrey and Ben’s future wedding, now that the love spell is broken and the truth of their connected threads can be believed in again. Mostly, she’s just tired of seeing these stupid red threads everywhere like a mine field that she has to navigate and she thinks that maybe, for the first time ever, her mother had the right idea when it came to snipping hers in half.

Mal groans, letting her head land noisily on the surface of the table in front of her. “Oh my God you guys,” she grumbles, resisting the urge to thump her head one more time. “If you guys are going to keep talking about this can you do it somewhere else? I’m trying to study.”

Honestly, Mal never thought those words would actually leave her mouth.

“I don’t care about your stupid red strings,” Mal mumbles for good measure.

Lonnie and Jane look at each other, their faces paling, their expressions almost comical in their matching embarrassment. “Oh my gosh, Mal, I’m so sorry,” Jane whispers, slinking low in her seat. “I didn’t think…”

“Yeah, Mal, sorry,” Lonnie says quickly. “I guess you probably wouldn’t want to hear about it, since, you know…” Her eyes land on Mal’s finger. The one without the red thread.

Mal quickly sits up and puts her hand in her lap. “It’s not about that,” she snaps, harsher than she’d intended. “It’s because we have a test tomorrow and…”

She trails off because Mal doesn’t really feel like she’s helping her case. And her words aren’t making Jane and Lonnie look at her any less sadly.

“Stop,” Mal snaps, picking up her pencil. “Seriously who cares about that kind of thing anyway.”

Jane hesitates, tapping her pen against her lips. “But don’t you want to know…who…”

“No.” Mal almost feels guilty about the way Jane winces at the crack of the word. Almost.

“Hey guys.” Mal feels the exact way she always does when she hears Evie’s voice: relieved, reassured, like a piece inside has been fitted back into place. “What’s going on? You all look so serious.”

Evie smiles as she takes a seat next to Mal, putting her bag into her lap to retrieve her textbooks. “What are you talking about?”

Lonnie shrugs. “Nothing, just-”

“Soul mates,” Jane supplies because she either hasn’t learned her lesson from her discussion with Mal or because she actually thinks Evie might somehow be immune to negative feelings about this particular topic.

Even though Evie’s fingers are equally free of red threads.

Something Jane seems to remember only when Evie deflates slightly, her shoulders folding forward. “Oh.”

Mal seriously wants to punch Jane in the face. She wonders if _that_ might be the thing that finally gets her kicked out of Auradon, though it would definitely be worth it. Especially given the way that Evie is looking at her hand and at Jane and Lonnie’s. Jane and Lonnie, who both have red threads stretching in two different directions, pulled taunt by the person on the other end, miles and miles away but still a part of their lives. An inevitability, just waiting for them.

“Do you…ever wonder?” Jane asks Evie tentatively and Mal almost admires her determination to get both feet into her mouth at the same time.

Evie swallows, lifting her head. “No,” she says brightly, flipping her hair over her shoulder. “I don’t really need to know what pathetic, dirty Isle villain I’m supposed to be destined to marry.” There’s a hint of teasing in her tone, something that almost makes Mal smile.

Though she thinks there’s something more in Evie’s tone, something that doesn’t make Mal want to smile at all. Something that makes her want to go back to the Isle and tear EQ limb from limb for ever robbing Evie of her red thread and whatever wonderful destiny was meant for her.

Inside her chest is that familiar pull, the longing that she always feels and can’t put a finger on, the stirring that hadn’t died, not completely, the moment her mother cut the red thread. Mal wonders if that means that somewhere, in the back of her mind, she wants to know, too, who would have been on the other end of her string.

“Well maybe you weren’t supposed to marry someone from the Isle,” Lonnie points out hopefully, clearly hoping to shift the conversation back to a more pleasant track. “Maybe you were always destined to come to Auradon and so your soul mate has been here the whole time.”

Mal feels a tightness in her chest, a sudden inability to breathe or see through the sudden fog that seems to have clouded her mind. Evie…and a perfect prince…here together in Auradon…

Mal gets to her feet suddenly, scraping her chair across the library floor and causing Jane to jump. “If you guys can’t shut up then I’m going to go study somewhere else,” she snaps, gathering up her things and leaving the three of them behind.

She knows that Evie is following her, but she doesn’t acknowledge it until they’re both back in their dorm room and Mal physically can’t ignore Evie anymore. She throws her books onto the bed before deciding to follow suit, flopping back onto the mountain of pillows on top of the bed perfectly made every day by a bunch of mice or something.

Evie leans against the bed post, studying Mal with an expression that Mal doesn’t care to decipher. She doesn’t want Evie feeling sorry for her too. “All this stuff really bothers you, doesn’t it?” Evie asks quietly.

Mal narrows her eyes. “What stuff?”

“With the red threads and soul mates and-”

“No, it doesn’t,” Mal informs her. “I don’t care about soul mates. And I’m just tried of seeing these stupid threads everywhere I look. How am I supposed to actually concentrate on anything when they’re everywhere?”

Evie sighs. “Mal-”

“I don’t know why you care,” Mal interrupts. “All this stuff is just bullshit anyway. And you know what these Auradon idiots don’t. That love is weakness and it just blinds you to the important things.”

Another sigh, this one deeper, sadder than before. Mal looks away from her. “Don’t act like you don’t care about anyone, Mal,” Evie says softly.

Mal rolls her eyes, pointedly refusing to look at Evie. “I do care about people, E,” she grumbles. “I care about Carlos and Jay. And I care about you. And I didn’t even need a stupid string to tell me to do that.”

There’s that tug in her chest, that empty aching feeling that sometimes makes it difficult to breathe. The pull that makes her want to look at Evie, though Mal refuses to give into the impulse.

“Mal,” Evie says, sitting down on the bed beside her. Her hand fits perfectly between her shoulder blades, a comforting warmth that Mal knows she’ll never get tired of. “You know I care about you too, Mal.” She kisses the top of Mal’s head and Mal can only hope Evie doesn’t notice the sharp intake of breath that follows.

“I know,” Mal says, still refusing to look at her. “So why does any of the rest of it matter?”

“I guess it doesn’t.” Evie adjusts her position so that she can lay her head on Mal’s back, taking the place her hand had previously been.

Mal closes her eyes, feeling the weight of Evie against her, savoring the sensation of matching her breathing with Evie’s.

Not for the first time, she’s glad that she doesn’t have one of those stupid strings around her finger. Though, this time, her reasons are decidedly different.

 

* * *

 

 For a while, Mal thinks that maybe the subject of the stupid threads and the stupid soul mates on the other end is finally over. Sure they’re still all over Auradon but she has more important things to focus on, like her friends and her art and spending time with Evie and adjusting to Auradon. No one brings them up, at least not around her, and Ben is even mum on the subject of anything related to soul mates and weddings and the magic of soul mates whenever he’s around Mal and the other kids from the Isle.

It’s a welcome change and one Mal definitely isn’t going to complain about.

So it only figures that someone would come along and ruin it and that that someone would happen to be Jane, who has a habit of ruining a lot of things that Mal is involved in.

Mal is sitting on the floor of Jay and Carlos’ room with Evie’s head resting on her thigh and a video game controller in her hand. She hasn’t had as much time to play as the boys have, so Jay is pretty much kicking her virtual ass, which is not something that Jay is going to let pass without some smack talk. The only thing keeping Mal from getting up and shoving her controller down Jay’s throat is the fact that Evie is dozing on her legs and she doesn’t want to wake her up. Honestly, Mal thinks Jay is using that as protection.

A knock on the door causes Evie to stir slightly and Carlos gets up, carrying Dude over to the door to let in the visitor. Mal is surprised to see Jane standing there, wringing her hands nervously. Though, Mal thinks that ‘nervous’ is Jane’s default state.

“Hey guys,” Jane says, offering them a tentative smile. “Can I come in?”

Mal is the only one who rolls her eyes at the question; Carlos just stands aside, gesturing for Jane to do exactly that. Evie sits up and Mal tries not to miss the weight of her head too much or the heat of her body. She can’t resist the urge to reach forward, running her fingers through Evie’s sleep mused hair, tucking it behind her ear.

“What’s up?” Carlos asks when Jane just looks at them uncertainly for a beat. She seems particularly nervous when she looks at Mal.

Jane swallows. “So…I’ve been talking to my mother and she thinks…well…we think…we might have found a way to help.”

Jay cocks his head. “Help with what…exactly?”  

“Well…with the…” Jane lifts her hand, her red thread on prominent display. “The whole soul mate situation. We might have found a way to fix what your parents did.”

Mal groans, flopping back down on the floor and ignoring the flash of pain that follows knocking her head on the floor. It’s not quite as easy to ignore the hopeful smile on Evie’s face or the wave of betrayal that follows it.

 

* * *

 

Mal is almost seventeen when she finds herself standing in Fairy Godmother’s office with Evie, Jay, Carlos, Jane and Ben, trying to fight down the surge of annoyance spreading through her body.

“Soul mates, the threads, the connection, it’s all magic,” Fairy Godmother is explaining as she looks at them, seeming pleased to be conducting class once more. “It’s the only little bit of magic that managed to exist on the Isle, not that most of the residents there were particularly fond of it.”

Mal rolls her eyes. “I wonder why,” she grumbles.

Fairy Godmother ignores her. “So, that being said, magic never completely disappears. It’s never gone, once it exists. And the magic created by the thread’s connection is still there, even if the threads themselves are gone. So we should be able to just…bring that magic back.”

“Is this really necessary?” Mal crosses her arms over her chest. “Seriously, why are we even doing this? What does it matter?”

“You don’t have to, Mal,” Fairy Godmother says kindly. “It’s just an option.”

Mal’s arms stay firmly crossed over her chest, a scowl on her face. She looks over at Evie but she knows by the way that Evie is refusing to look back at her that Evie has already made her decision.

It doesn’t matter, of course it doesn’t matter. She’s not going to lose Evie to whatever perfect prince is on the other end of her red thread…right? She and Evie have something special, something that they choose, something that can’t be undone by a thread and some magic…right?

Mal tries to ignore the wild pounding in her heart, the way her palms are suddenly sweaty and prickling, the way that she feels an absurd and completely irrational need to cry. She scowls down at the floor instead.

Evie is the first one to step forward, a tentative smile on her face. “Are you sure this will work?”

“Pretty sure,” Jane says with a nod and hopeful smile.

Even Ben nods. “I’ve been looking through the books in my mom’s library. It seems like there are other cases like this, where the threads have been severed for whatever reason and magic has been used to reconnect them.”

Fairy Godmother smiles. “Even though your mother cut your thread, dear, we should be able to-”

“Oh, my mother never cut mine,” Evie interrupts. “She would never have done that, not when she thought it could lead me to a prince.” This time she just rolls her eyes at the mention of a prince. “Mine just disappeared almost as soon as it showed up…just…poof.”

Mal feels a tug in her chest and can’t fight the urge to lift her head.

Fairy Godmother gives Evie a sympathetic smile. “The other end must have been cut first,” she says.

“So it _is_ someone on the Isle,” Evie whispers to herself and when she looks at Mal over her shoulder, Mal feels a jolt spread through her chest.

It’s electric in the same way it had been when her mother had touched her thread, but it’s not unpleasant. In fact, it feels like the exact opposite.

Mal jumps in surprise when Jay bumps his shoulder against hers. “You should do it,” he says so only she can hear him. “What do you have to lose?”

 _Everything_. But the word doesn’t make it past her lips.

Instead, Mal just looks at Evie and wonders if maybe…maybe…

She thinks of grey castles and flashes of blue and a torn up letter brought by a vulture and a perfect princess and her vain mother banished to their corner of the world by Maleficent.

Maybe her mother knew something all along that she never did.

“Fine,” Mal grumbles, forcing herself to step forward, to stand beside Evie in front of Fairy Godmother. “Let’s just get this over with.”

Evie reaches for her hand and it doesn’t seem like such a bad idea anymore.

Mal closes her eyes as Fairy Godmother recites the words to whatever spell she’s been perfecting for the past several days. She keeps them closed as she feels a strange warmth move through her body, as she feels that tug in her chest, more powerful than before, pulling her toward something. Someone. She can feel the pull on her finger too but Mal refuses to open her eyes.

The warmth disappears. The brightness fades from the room and Mal figures that she can’t keep standing there like an idiot with her eyes closed.

When she looks down at her hand, Mal almost misses the red thread completely. It isn’t stretching far off into the distance; it isn’t pulling her back toward the Isle or in the direction of some unknown person she’s supposed to meet and fall in love with. It’s barely there at all, just a small loop hanging slack between her hand and Evie’s, where the other end of the thread connects.

When Mal pulls her hand away from Evie’s, the thread stretches, growing a little longer. But still it remains connected to Evie on the other end.

Mal swallows around the tightness in her throat and wonders if something might have gone wrong with Fairy Godmother’s spell. Is that why she suddenly finds it hard to breathe? Is that why she suddenly feels like she can’t see anyone else in the room but Evie?

“My mother cut the thread,” Mal says, hoping that her voice is actually working, hoping that Evie can hear her above the sudden pounding in her chest.

Evie smiles and fits her hand back into Mal’s. “I had hoped.”

Mal furrows her brow. “You had? For me?” She frowns. “What about the perfect princes?”

Evie rolls her eyes. “Who needs them?”

Honestly, Mal couldn’t agree more.

 

* * *

 

Mal is eighteen years old when she finally understands all the excitement and talk about the red threads and the people on the other end of them.

Mal looks down at her hand, trying to make it seem like she’s still listening intently to one of Maui’s stories about creating palm trees or snakes or something. The thread encircling her finger is stretched out, twisting among the shoulders and updos of countless royal wedding guests, one more line of red in a zig-zagging sea of them. Even still, Mal knows which one is hers.

At the end of the thread is Evie, laughing at something Merriweather and Maid Marian are saying, her head tipped back so that some of her hair is slipping free of its bun. A flash of blue among a sea of colors that look dull in comparison.

Playfully, Mal tugs on the string, catching Evie’s attention immediately and when their eyes meet, Evie rolls hers, shaking her head at Mal. But there’s a smile on her face, a sign that she doesn’t mind so much at all. She just tugs in return and the sensation that spreads through Mal’s chest is electric, all fire and sunshine and Evie.

So she gets it, finally. She gets the appeal of having someone meant for you, someone always waiting just on the other end of the thread tied around her finger.

But she’ll never admit it.

Just like she’ll never admit the fact that her favorite part about the red thread isn’t that when people look, they can see that her thread leads to Evie, that Evie belongs with her.

It’s that _she_ belongs to Evie.

Which, honestly, Mal figures she’s always known. But a little confirmation doesn’t hurt.   


End file.
